Gish Jen, whose new book, “The Resisters,” is her fifth novel and her first in nine years, is sitting in her home office in Cambridge, Mass., and describing it with writerly precision. “Cambridge, this time of year, does not have a lot of light, but I do have windows on two sides, so every bit of light available in Cambridge is right here in my office,” she says. She’s particularly proud of a library ladder for her two walls of bookshelves. “We all want one, don’t we?”

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